iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 02/10/2026

26/10/2: Cain Culto, Culto (2026) Queer Latinetucky urbano in English and Spanish, with banjo and fiddle among the perreo beats, and lyrics of personal, sexual, political, and cosmic defiance. Among the rare artists I think work better in the bricolage of an album rather than in any single song.

Cain Culto, Culto (2026)

A photograph of a man, naked except for thigh-high tribal guarachero boots with spurs, running across a white space with a live chicken in one hand. There is lots of motion blur, although his face, chest, and ass are mostly in focus.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 01/10/2026

apparently i'm an anarcho-syndicalist, with the same morality phrase

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 30/09/2026

we’re sharing favorite albums of the year with the best quarter of it left to go? all right, i GUESS (first time in fifteen years ive listened to enough albums to make a list, rubric is do i want to listen to it again)

A screenshot of a Notes app document in dark mode, titled 2026 albums, and which goes on to read:

RaiNao, Marcriá
Anitta, Equilibrivm I & II
Melanie Santiler, Los Cisnes
Tokischa, Amor & Droga

There is a lot of blank space below that as if to indicate how much I haven’t yet heard.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 28/09/2026

26/9/28: Mari la Carajita, ¿Ya se fue Nana? (2026) one of Venezuela's current great pop hopes, slinging salsa, reggae(ton), electropop, and traditional llanero rhythms with assurance. she gets political, has a raunchy wlw song, and collaborates with a bunch of other up-and-coming venezuelan artists

Mari la Carajita, ¿Ya se fue Nana? (2026)

A photograph from the inside of a miniature house showing a Venezuelan living room, with couch, chairs, side table, chanclas, tile floor, overhead lamp, and walls decorated with local and religious iconography, while a woman, giant in comparison to the size of the room, looks in through the window, with a vaguely worried expression.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 28/09/2026

third show in three days, almost like i’m not a hermit for whom money is getting tight. but i am old enough that i got a balcony seat instead of standing on the floor.

A photograph of the empty pre-show stage at Thalia Hall from an upper left balcony. Guitars and effects pedals are set up on stage right, a dense percussion ensemble on stage left, and in the center a single microphone stand, with an acoustic guitar on a rest behind. Lights are busy, purples and pinks.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 26/09/2026

second show of the weekend, going from jazz shakespeare to ballet molnár

The pre-show stage of the Chicago Lyric Opera, featuring a large gray screen with the image of a window broken into it, through which can be seen clouds and sky. The vast proscenium with many gilded decorations dominates the photo, as it is taken from quite far back on the main floor.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 26/09/2026

going on fourteen years in chicago, second time visiting navy pier (and first time of my own volition)

A photograph of the curtained stage at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater before a performance, taken from a house left balcony. There are still many empty seats in the pit, and those who are seated are almost exclusively white and elderly. The curtain is deep red and heavily swagged (a term I had to look up), with a broad spotlight on the upper center.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 25/09/2026

26/9/25: Melanie Santiler, Los Cisnes (2026) A rare day-of-drop listen for me, the debut album of the most exciting young female Cuban artist I know of. She sings with Anglo rock effort rather than trad Latin smoothness, but her aesthetic is capacious and her pen sharp. Gonna go longer in a quote.

Melanie Santiler, Los Cisnes (2026)

A photograph of a woman standing in a shallow tide pool with the ocean in the background at dusk. She is wearing a white feathered gown resembles swans' wings draping over her and dipping into the water. Her hair is dyed platinum blonde and she looks at the camera steadily.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 22/09/2026

26/9/22: Mari Froes, Esquina do Sol (2026) I first met her on TikTok, where her hushed, thoughtful slices of bossa&b were a respite from noise and discourse. Would have loved this album far more 20 years ago when tasteful recreations of classic sounds were all i listened to, but I still admire it.

Mari Froes, Esquina do Sol (2026)

A photocollage of a woman in an oversized blazer, a red tartan tie wrapped around her neck, and large hair agaiinst a background of cut-out objects. A symbol of the Sacred Heart is laid over her chest.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 21/09/2026

26/9/21: Yendry, Como Água (2026) A Dominican-born, Italy-raised singer I've followed for years, with a DTMF-core debut album about homeland, nostalgia, and identity that's getting a serious promo push. I like her embrace of layers of Dominican music history, but she still feels fatally muted.

Yendry, Como Agua (2026)

A black-and-white photograph of a woman with long curly black hair sitting hip-deep in the surf, open sea behind her, holding and surrounded by pages of dense handwriting. She is wearing a lacy white top, with a black brassiere showing through, and looking at the camera with no expression.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 18/09/2026

Joe Shuster. Ultimately I think something important was lost when the Superman strip stopped living in Roy Crane's shadow and the art got more industrial even if it was "better."

The cover of Action Comics #23 (April 1940), showing a woman in a green dress falling from a great height over a cityscape as Superman flies to catch her. She looks terrified; he looks determined.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 18/09/2026

"The True Story of the Unconquered," a comics biography of Emiliano Zapata drawn by Joe Kubert in 1946 for Interfaith Publications.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 17/09/2026

26/9/17: Bodine, Adagios (2026) Puerto Rican alt-pop girlie with an EP that gestures toward European art music traditions but erupts into banging beats every now and then. Not sure I totally buy the singer-songwriter vulnerability, but I definitely do the strutting perreo.

Bodine, Adagios (2026)

A photograph of a woman lying on red carpet in front of a white wall with black trim. Light from a window is on the wall behind her. She is wearing a white dress and white slip-on shoes, and is wrapped in a large blue netting bag which is tied in a large bow at the top.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 15/09/2026

26/9/15: Zulu Queens, Isithembu (2026) an album-length collab between Lwah Ndlunkulu and Mahwoo (who I know from amapiano vocals), largely in the trad maskandi genre, real Zulu-roots stuff. pleasant listening, and probably important if you have the cultural competence for it (i don't)

Zulu Queens, Isithembu (2026)

A highly edited photograph of two women in regal headdresses and traditional gowns in modern cuts against a background of a thatched-roof hut, with a reddish-brown tint to everything. Lots of logos and verbiage scattered around the cover.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 13/09/2026

but it’s a two-movie day today

A photograph of a physical ticket for Center Stage (1991) at the Gene Siskel Film Center

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 09/09/2026

26/9/9: Villano Antillano, Ante el Umbral del Peligro No Siento Temor (2026) Puerto Rico's premiere trans urbano artist with another solid collection of tuff, filthy, confrontational songs in her crisp, unapologetic baritone. As much in dialogue with international trans pop as with local concerns.

Villano Antillano, Ante el Umbral del Peligro No Siento Temor (2026)

A computer-generated image of a naked woman in the clouds embracing a bright sword twice her size. She is seen from behind, the sword is at an angle, and everything is shaded red. The title of the album is represented by the initials NST.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 07/09/2026

gonna be chasing the high of soaking in the wide world this exposed me to until i die

American Pop: An Audio History
From Minstrel to Mojo: On Record, 1893-1946
Special Bonus!
9 CDs for the Price of 7!

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 04/09/2026

it thought i was from oregon until i chose "water fountain" over "drinking fountain" (i use both) when it finally landed on phx mydialect.us/quiz-standar...

a dialect heat map of the united states, with darkest red spreading across the west coast and southwest, with San Franciso, Los Angeles and Phoenix highlighted, and darkest blue on the gulf coast, with New Orleans highlighted

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 31/08/2026

posting this mostly so i know where it is when i need a quick response to bluesky being bluesky. feel free, of course, to do the same

A frame from Daffy Duck and Egghead (1938, dir. Tex Avery), in which Egghead, with a female decoy duck at his feet, stares pop-eyed at a hand-lettered sign posted on a cattail at the edge of a lake that reads: "T'aint funny McGee," Molly's catchphrase in popular radio sitcom of the era Fibber McGee and Molly.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 29/08/2026

the gravitational well of DC/Marvel warps the "Golden Age of Comics" to refer almost exclusively to wartime superheroes, but the true Golden Age of US comic books was 1946-1954, when romance, horror, western, war, crime, teen, fantasy and sci-fi titles exploded, many of which Kirby helped pioneer.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 28/08/2026

celebrate the King’s birthday by posting your favorite Jack Kirby image

A scan of a comics panel from Mister Miracle #5 (Nov-Dec 1971), showing a tall, strongly built woman (Big Barda) in a halter top and short shorts carrying a cannon twice her size over one shoulder, cables dangling from it, as four rough men stare in astonishment, and another, more clean-cut man (Scott Free) turns to wave at them. A flatbed truck in the background shows where she got the cannon. Two of the men have fallen to the ground in the excitement. Written and drawn by Jack Kirby, inked and lettered by Mike Royer, colors unattributed.

Caption: The truckers watch in awe-struck silence as Barda casually walks off with an impossible burden!!
Scott: Well, er-- thanks, men! Don't forget to exercise!
Man 1: I could exercise until I'm muscle-bound!!-- and never do that!!!
Man 2: This "woman's lib" thing is getting more serious than I thought!!

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 25/08/2026

Maurice Vellekoop (Canada), "Music" in Drawn & Quarterly, 1991 (Canada)

A full-color comics page showing a complete one-page story titled "Music" which begins with colorful abstract shapes in darkness, then pulls out to show a young man listening on headphones in between the colors; the music ends and shows us the room he's in, although the colors continue to float around his head as he goes out and walks down the street, fainter and fainter echoes of the music he had been immersed in moments go. The art style is simple and cartoony, but the coloring is lovely, exquisite watercolors.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

Stan Lee & Howie Post (USA), Dr. Dingbat in Nellie the Nurse, 1952 (USA)

A full-color comics page, yellowed with age. A fat German doctor gets on a train for a vacation, misinterprets a pretty young woman's expression as flirtatious, and gets summarily knocked down by her as a consequence. The art style is loose and expressive, with swirly brush work and cartoony liveliness.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

Masao Yajima & Kenshi Hirokane (Japan), "餓鬼(後編)" in Human Scramble, 1986 (Japan)

A black and white comics page showing a communal outdoor meal at sunset, a bunch of people at different tables eating while others cook over an outdoor oven. The art style is sober, detailed and realistic, with polished establishing shots and plenty of grayscale texture.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

Shary Flenniken (USA), "Ageless Love" in National Lampoon, 1985 (USA)

A full-color comics page showing a young-looking woman weeping on bleachers before being approached by a young man who romances her, intercut with panels of her talking to another woman in a classroom in different outfits. The art style is clean and open, with the undetailed simplicity of comic-strip art that focuses directly on the verbal pacing, but is much more technically accomplished than the rendering might at first suggest.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

Carol Swain (UK), "Gallions Reach" in Way Out Strips, 1992 (Canada)

A black-and-white comics page showing a man and a woman in a small boat going down a river next to an industrial area. They pull up next to a large ship.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

José Muñoz (Argentina), Carlos Gardel: La voix de l'Argentine, 2008 (France)

A black-and-white comics page showing a gleaming smile, focusing more and more on the gleam until the panel is pure white, crescendoing in song lyrics, whereupon a well-dressed audience erupts into a standing ovation. The art style is loose and gestural, with strong fundamentals in the applause panels, but the willingness to embrace minimalist abstraction is breathtaking.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

Jesse Marsh (USA), "Tarzan and the Hunter's Reward" in Tarzan, 1950 (USA)

A full-color comics page showing a young African woman in a large headdress acting out a hunting adventure with a prop spear while her tribe watches. An elder is skeptical, but she continues. The art style is subdued but assured, with careful spot blacks, superb anatomy, and a complete lack of racial caricature, the relatively stereotypical costuming aside.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

Laurent Theureau (France), "Bullit Joe" in À Suivre, 1993 (Belgium)

A full-color comics page, showing a man reading a newspaper poolside, intercut with panels from the comic strip he's reading, in which a fat mouse and e penguin talk, take their leave, and in the punchline the mouse is blown up by the penguin. The man responds with an equivocal grimace. The art style is clean and illustrative, with richer and more shaded colors in the poolside panels, and lighter, flatter colors and little shading in the comic-within-a-comic panels.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

Flavio Colin (Brazil), "A Canção do Verdugo" in Spektro, 1981 (Brazil)

A black-and-white comics page showing a stereotypical Latin American riding a donkey through the countryside being confronted by a ghostly apparition holding its head in one hand, and riding away in terror, but followed by the sounds of trumpets. The art style is bold and iconographic, with thick lines, stark shadows, vivid action, and plain hatching.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

I like Yuzuki's scratchy, crude but carefully observed art style a lot; it seems like it's pointing forward to contemporary Western arts comics in some ways. The stories are also carefully observed but crude, with plenty of scatological humor and children dimly comprehending adult sexuality.

A comics page showing a vine growing in front of a market stall as a crowd gathers in astonishment, focusing particularly on the reactions of one small boy.

A comics page showing a boy rowing a boat away while a young girl stands in floodwater outside her home and watches as a hummingbird flies by.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 24/08/2026

Forgot to post this a couple days back, when I read a scanlation of this collection of stories, apparently semiautobiographical, first published between 1986 and in 1990 in Japan, and which has also appeared in French.

The cover to a scanlated edition of Mizumachi by Kazu Yuzuki (1990). The cover drawing is of a woman in a crop top and shorts carrying baskets of squash slung from a pole over her shoulders down a semi-tropical street. The romanized title is spelled out in a cringey chop suey font.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 23/08/2026

Gary Panter (USA), Jimbo in Raw, 1984 (USA)

A black-and-white comics page showing a man, holding a bucket, confronting a multi-eyed monster and leaping at it as though to attack. The art style is deliberately crude and even scribbly, with clear Vortcist allusions in the shape-making and linework, but which also owes a lot to Jack Kirby's action paneling. One of the most thrilling pages that you can barely make out what's going on in.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 23/08/2026

Antoni Calonge (Spain), "La ciudad lavable" in El Víbora, 1984 (Spain)

A duotone comics page in black, shades of orange, and white, showing a twelve-panel grid of disconnected urban imagery, circling around the theme of a subway journey but interrupted by shots of apartment hallways or individual faces, with no figure appearing more than once. The art style is caricatured and expressionistic, with something of Harvey Kurtzman's loose gestural figure-making and something of Liberatore's meticulous finishes.

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 20/08/2026

what i still automatically think of when i hear people talk about 90s comics

The cover of Eightball #12 by Daniel Clowes

The cover of Dirty Plotte #9 by Julie Doucet

The cover of Slutburger #5 by Mary Fleener

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 19/08/2026

going to go ahead and post this (short) comic in full, because it's worth seeing. you don't really need to be able to read portuguese to get it, but i've put translations in the alt text anyway

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · 19/08/2026